


Stuck Alone with You

by wrothmothking



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Bigender Deputy, Canonical Character Death, Enemies to Lovers, Other, Post-Resist Ending, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-18 17:42:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18254717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrothmothking/pseuds/wrothmothking
Summary: They're all they have.





	Stuck Alone with You

They burn Dutch.

Eden's not sure if he would've preferred a return to the earth, tries not to think about it as she chokes back her tears and swallows her sobs best as she can. Crying is no weakness by itself, but the blurred vision and shrieking headache that come with it cannot be afforded in Joseph Seed's presence. He hovers beside her, staring at his own handiwork with a grief she finds nauseating.

But perhaps he sees something else in the flames. Either way, Dutch deserves better: he's not a placeholder for neither of the men nor the woman who had terrorized his home and threatened everything he'd ever given a damn about, no matter the cause they'd served. No matter what little, brewing apocalypse they'd been so terribly right about.

"Thank you, my friend. I hope you find your family." Her voice trembles with the words. So many thoughts race through her mind, things he deserved to hear back when he was alive and it mattered.

Their acquaintanceship had been short-- _cut short by the man daring to breathe beside her at his funeral_ \--but for that time he'd been her voice in the dark.

Now he's gone, and the darkness threatens to swallow her whole.

A hand creeps onto her shoulder, burning her skin through her pink unicorn t-shirt. "He's in a better place-"

Whirling around, she plants her fist into the soft organs of his abdomen, delighting in the pained whimper as he crumples into her, his hands grabbing desperately at her shoulders and his face sinking into the curve of her collarbone. His body pressing into hers is suffocating; she throws him off. He falls against the wall, stares back at her with those damned green eyes that see too much and understand nothing.

Except they're blue. They should be green, distorted by his low-key supervillain sunglasses, but they're not. They're bare, they're blue, they're just like John's, just like Jacob's. Two days it's been, and still it hurts like wasps in her lungs.

"Is this the vindication you seek?"

Snarling, she turns away from him. Eden doesn't leave Dutch's quarters for nearly a week. Joseph doesn't seek her out, nor does he say a thing of it when the need for human contact finally forces her back to him. He merely sets a second plate at the table.

* * *

He calls her a good man, not knowing she's dreamed of killing him, dreamed of futures without him. He calls her a good man, and Eden grinds her teeth and averts her gaze and pretends the shame she tastes at the back of her throat is for not going through with it rather than for considering it at all.

The blood she's shed for the resistance. The suffering she's witnessed.

Eden tells herself she needs Joseph if she wants to come out of this as something shaped like a person, because coming out of it herself is already a foregone conclusion.

* * *

There's plenty of muscle interlaced with her rolls, so she takes over much of the labor. Joseph's work, the stitching and the cooking and the cleaning, keeps him far busier, but in the high humidity and high pressure environment of the bunker her arthritis flares worse than ever. Joseph hugs her close when she eventually admits what watching him scuttle around while she sits on her ass does to her pride and promises to include her more. Everything becomes a two-person job, as if they weren't already spending every waking moment in yelling distance.

While he knits her a shirt, she tells him every fairy tale she remembers.

And while she scrubs out the bath with her feet, he sings to her so sweet she thinks she must've dragged herself to the bunker that day and imagined him up, for how else could the Father be so perfect and hers after everything she'd done to him?

They share Dutch's bed. Every night they spend quieting one another's nightmares, it feels less like a betrayal.

It feels like love.

Never something she would've planned, no longer something she deserves. But they're all each other have, trapped together at the end of the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Gift fic for @swatchdcg, starring their Deputy Eden Anderson! Hope you liked! :D


End file.
